Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that uses the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. Bluetooth is particularly intended for small mobile devices such as notebook computers, mobile phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Pseudo-random frequency-hopping techniques are employed by communicating Bluetooth devices to minimize the effects of signal interference in the ISM band. The Bluetooth technology is set forth in detail in Bluetooth SIG, Specification of the Bluetooth System, Version 1.2, Nov. 5, 2003, incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
The Bluetooth Personal Area Networking Profile (hereinafter “the PAN Profile”) provides a conceptual basis on which two or more Bluetooth-enabled devices can form and participate in personal area networks (PANs), allowing them to interoperate and exchange data. (See Bluetooth SIG, Personal Area Networking Profile, Version 1.0, Feb. 14, 2003, incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.) The PAN Profile describes three roles that a Bluetooth device may assume: Network Access Point (NAP), Group Ad-hoc Network (GN), and Personal Area Network User (PANU). NAP and GN correspond to services that may be used by a Bluetooth device operating as a client PANU. “NAP”, “GN,” and “PANU” will be used hereinafter to refer generally to the Bluetooth-equipped node providing the respective NAP, GN or PANU service.
In the Bluetooth context, a NAP is a device that contains one or more Bluetooth radio devices within a “piconet,” and acts as a bridge, proxy or router to a second network (such as a 10BaseT Ethernet LAN) with respect to one or more PANUs with a Bluetooth wireless connection to the NAP, in addition to enabling the NAP and PANU devices within the piconet to communicate with each other. Each such PANU thereby may gain access to the second network's shared resources. A GN is a collection of Bluetooth devices that interact with one another to form a self-contained temporary wireless network within a piconet, and does not interconnect with a second network infrastructure. In both the NAP and the GN scenarios, data exchange is by way of the Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP), which provides for encapsulation of Ethernet packets. (See Bluetooth SIG, Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP) Specification [hereinafter “the BNEP Specification”], Version 1.0, Feb. 14, 2003, incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.)
While the BNEP Specification and the PAN Profile contain conceptual definitions and general constraints on features of conformant PAN role-providing implementations, these documents leave open the architectural and algorithmic makeup of such implementations. This creates an opportunity to develop the new and useful approach to implementing aspects of a Bluetooth PAN driver module that is disclosed herein.